Tamasopo

Tamasopo is the seat of its namesake municipality on the western edge of the Huasteca Potosina. It lies at about 370 metres in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental, ringed by mountains that climb to around 1,500 metres, and had 4,599 residents in 2020. The name is Tének, from tam (place) and tzopon (to drip), so roughly "where it drips".

The town has always been called Tamasopo, though the municipality went by La Palma until 1932. This is borderland: the hot Huasteca lowlands meet the cooler uplands of Pame country here, and San Francisco de La Palma, in the south-west of the municipality, is the largest Pame settlement in that whole region. Huastec people traditionally lived in the south of the municipality and Pames in the north, and around 3,000 people still speak an Indigenous language. At over 1,300 km², the municipality is the third largest in the Huasteca Potosina, a mix of rivers, sinkholes, caves, marshes and sierra.

Sugar cane drives the economy, feeding the mill at Tambaca, one of the country's top producers; farmers also grow maize, bananas, papaya, mango, mamey and citrus. Town and Agua Buena, four kilometres along the Tamasopo River, have grown into one urban strip. Water is what brings visitors: the Tamasopo waterfalls are 2 km from the centre, El Trampolín is in Agua Buena, Puente de Dios lies about 3 km north-west, and the Ciénaga de Tamasopo wetland has been a Ramsar site since 2008. Town is where you eat, sleep and pick up a taxi to any of them.